Grace Fellowship Church - Pre-Conference Session 1

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March 12, 2025

March 7/2025 | Preconference session 1 | Expository sermon by Mack Tomlinson. This is the first session of the preconference dedicated to elders and church leadership.

00:00: The following recording is from our Grace Fellowship Church Conference 2025. Please visit us at graceedmonton .ca
00:08: to learn more about us. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.
00:16: You can also find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please enjoy the following recording.
00:23: Good morning. It's a joy to see your faces, some for the further times and some of you for the first time.
00:39: It's a joy to be back in Edmonton and just to meet new family we're going to live with forever.
00:50: And, you know, Christians are the only people that have true literal family everywhere in the world.
01:00: You can find believers who love the Lord Jesus Christ, every tribe, tongue, nation of the earth, and that's advancing more.
01:10: So thank you for having us, uh, Shane and Sam.
01:18: Thank you for the invitation to come and participate in this conference. I would ask your prayers for my voice and my throat.
01:29: The Lord will help me, but I would appreciate prayer very much for that. I won't use it in the pulpit.
01:38: I have one down there. Thank you, brother. So the theme of this conference in essence is endurance for the long haul, enduring, persevering in ministry through discouragements, through whatever comes.
01:57: But all that obviously doesn't just apply to the Christian ministry.
02:03: It applies equally to the Christian life, right? Jesus said it's the one who endures to the end who's going to prove to be truly saved.
02:15: So perseverance is not an option, is it? And as John Newton said, through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come.
02:28: And so, as A .W. Tozer said, the Christian, when they're born again, they're born into a hostile world behind enemy lines.
02:40: And this world is not a playground, it's a battleground. So no theme really is more fitting and pertinent to living the
02:54: Christian life in a post -Christian world, in a very secular society like Canada.
03:03: And increasingly, your sister to the south is chasing you for that liberalism.
03:12: In this past couple of years, you've had it more difficult in a lot of ways than America has, but God is equipping his church.
03:23: He's sifting out the goats. Since COVID really, the sheep and the goats become more obvious who's real and who isn't and who doesn't continue to persevere.
03:38: But God is building his church. And he wants to equip all of his children, church leaders and pastors and elders and deacons and believers alike with endurance that right to the last moment of your breath and the beating of your heart, you're running after Christ.
04:05: So I want to speak this morning in this first session from 2 Timothy chapter 2 on the topic or the title,
04:22: Endurance for a Lifetime of Ministry. Now, if you're not a minister or you don't serve in any leadership capacity, you can change your title to Endurance for a
04:34: Lifetime of Living for Christ. It all is the same, whether you're an elder pastor or a new believer, endurance to the end, endurance for a lifetime is the goal.
04:52: And so 2 Timothy chapter 2, we'll read verses 1 through 4.
04:58: Paul's words to his beloved son in the faith, Timothy. He says, you, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, these things you commit to faithful men.
05:31: Who shall be able to teach others also. Thou, therefore, endure hardness or endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
05:49: No one that woreth or goes to battle entangles himself with the affairs of this life in order that he may please him who has chosen him to be a good soldier.
06:11: So every Christian, man, woman, boy or girl, every true
06:17: Christian is called to fight the good fight, to wage a good warfare, to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
06:36: God desires many things. I mean, I think of the word worship. I was listening recently to Alistair Begg about worship and it just struck me the
06:48: God -centeredness of what we must have in worship.
06:54: You know, with the last, really the last 40 years in the professing
07:03: Christian world, worship has been a big buzzword. The charismatic movement, the
07:10: Jesus movement in the United States in the 1970s and then wonderful songs were birthed often.
07:22: But false views about worship emerged, didn't they? What it is, what it didn't, what it ought to look like, what it ought to and all that.
07:30: So, but the fact is God is looking for true worshipers, true worshipers who worship in spirit and truth.
07:41: He is looking for true disciples who follow their master right in the straight and narrow and don't get off the path, don't get distracted by new trends and new movements and men who can speak heresy very persuasively and beautifully.
08:08: The Lord wants disciples on the straight and narrow. He wants all of us to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ and to take heed, as Moses said over and over again, to take heed to the words of Jehovah, to take heed to the words of the
08:31: God of Israel, which Jesus called God's words.
08:38: He said every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Well, then
08:46: Jesus quoted Deuteronomy three times. And so the Bible is the mouth of God and the
08:54: Holy Spirit is the one that speaks it through his church and through his servants. So we are to be among those who desire to stay focused, to be watchful in all things, but also who have a fresh rising faith like Caleb, who at 85 said,
09:19: I want to kill me a moose, let's go. Now that's Texan for I want that mountain.
09:27: Caleb at 85, he is conquering new realms. He's going after the promises of God, but God had promised him 40 or years early the land, right?
09:40: And at 85 here he is saying, give me that mountain. Every Christian ought to be that way in their heart toward the
09:48: Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, I want higher ground. I want to be treading on the upward way, new heights
09:55: I'm gaining every day. So that's the kind of worshipers that God wants.
10:05: He wants true Christians who are all out, sold out in reality, not just in word only, but indeed in truth, sold out completely radically to serve the
10:22: King of Kings. Now, if that's in any of our hearts, the
10:31: Bible says that we must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom, possess the kingdom.
10:41: So along with being a worshiper and a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and a servant of God, if that's your badge, your badge was baptism.
10:56: When you were baptized in a sense, outwardly to the world and you're, you're a follower of Christ.
11:03: Well, with that package of salvation comes suffering.
11:11: It comes right with it. Paul said to the Philippians in chapter one, unto you, it has been given not only to believe on Christ, but to also what?
11:23: Suffer for his sake. So with salvation comes forgiveness of sins and union with Christ.
11:34: And the warning of the reality of suffering will also be given to us.
11:42: This is a very big truth in the Bible. Endurance. Marching through everything you have to face and you come out on the other end of it, more like Christ.
11:59: You become out better. You come out better than those who don't come out and they're bitter.
12:06: Everything in life often that we experienced brings suffering.
12:12: And it's a massive truth addressed in the New Testament. And I believe in our day, nothing is more important for Christians in general, or for those in gospel ministry, particularly to realize that we have a mission to fulfill, but we have an enemy who has set on disqualifying every one of us from finishing our mission to cause you to be a castaway, a reprobate, to walk away from the faith as the book of Hebrews so strongly warns against.
12:48: Now it is hardly possible to overstate the importance of this, that every believer is responsible for God to endure all things and to persevere through all things, not alone, but you have to go through it yourself.
13:08: No one can do it for you, whatever it is that you are experiencing. We have an adversary that is busy at every stage of our life's work, seeking to destroy and discourage every
13:25: Christian. Have you read the Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan? That's what it's all about.
13:32: It's an astounding picture of the Christian journey from leaving the city of destruction in your lost condition, and you sit down often without support of family, but actually having opposition of family when you come to Christ, and you're walking alone, and your face is set toward Zion, but you have to keep going.
14:01: There's no turning back. And so, statistics tell us today excuse me, that many begin well, but don't always finish well.
14:25: In fact, don't you often don't finish at all. We've heard of famous people, and we've heard of friends in our own circles that sadly fall away.
14:42: So to endure to the end well, we must do what the Apostle Paul said, and by way of introduction,
14:50: I just want us to realize that a personal closer study of the topic of suffering, and hardship, and temptation, and battling error or heresy, and staying close to your church, and availing yourself of every means of grace, prayer, and the
15:25: Word of God, and the ministry of the church, and private devotions, and true fellowship. Every one of those are means to keep us pressing on.
15:37: And so, I want to address in my two sessions today this theme of endurance and finishing well in the form of two historical biographies.
15:50: The first would take us back to the 18th century of the colonies of pre -America.
15:59: There were 13 colonies before America became a nation, and toward the end of the 18th century, 13
16:08: British colonies that were under the rule of the
16:14: King of Britain. Strong rule. Now one of those colonies was
16:22: Connecticut. It's north of New York City, obviously, and in the 18th century in Connecticut, near New Haven, there was a small town called
16:37: Haddam, Connecticut, and there was a family who owned a farm, and the last name of the family was the
16:45: Brainerds. And by this time, they had been there several generations, having immigrated over.
16:53: The Brainerds had nine children, and the sixth and seventh of them were brothers.
17:00: David Brainerd. Anybody ever heard of David Brainerd? As most
17:05: Christians who've read or listened over the years, they're aware of David Brainerd, but his younger brother by two years was
17:14: John Brainerd. So, we're going to see from their example this morning, the Brainerd brothers of what it looks like to endure through a lot, extreme hardship, and when they came to the time of their death, they really had no regrets.
17:43: Now, they weren't perfect men, and they would have had personal regrets, but when you look at the record, the record was exemplary and very, very inspiring.
17:55: The indomitable Brainerd brothers and their 18th century mission to the
18:01: North American Indian tribes. Now, those tribes don't exist anymore. They dispersed.
18:07: The colonial government gave them land, took it away, gave them new land, they'd move, took it away again, and finally, the
18:19: Indian tribes dispersed into Canada, into the northern states of Michigan, and the
18:26: Dakotas, and then other places. But during the 18th century, the
18:35: North American Indian tribes were all over the eastern coast area, from Long Island, New York City, into Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other areas as well.
18:49: So, my message this morning basically has three brief points.
18:56: Hopefully, the Brainerd story, number one, and I think, Shane, some of the books will be here maybe today.
19:06: The story is in the book by Reformation Heritage, and so I'll be later, but I'll be reading a few excerpts that hopefully will be brief and edifying.
19:20: So, the Brainerd story, their hardships, and their endurance.
19:26: Very simple points. The story of what happened, who they were, their hardships, some of them that they went through, and their endurance all the way to the end, because these two brothers are examples for us today.
19:42: Think about this. If all of Hebrews 11, and the names that are mentioned, and those not mentioned by name, are they not still examples for us because we see a record of what they did?
20:00: Yes. Well, those in church history we read about, including David Brainerd, they are examples to us today, even though it's over 300 years later, because their choices to obey
20:16: Christ, their endurance through hardship, their commitment to missions, their living for him daily, shines brightly to us over the pages of history.
20:31: So, the years. What years are we talking about? 18th century. David Brainerd was 21 years old in the year 1739.
20:41: So, from 1739 to the death of John Brainerd in 1781, that's four decades, the
20:50: Brainerd brothers, their lives and ministry was occurring.
20:57: So, let's just think about the story. David Brainerd enters
21:06: Yale College. There were no universities yet. There was Harvard College, there was
21:12: Yale College, and those were really the first two universities or colleges that were going to become universities.
21:23: So, David enters Yale in 1739, just two months after his conversion to Christ.
21:30: He had always wanted to be a minister in the
21:35: Presbyterian church, even before he was converted. And he struggled deeply in those a couple of years prior to his conversion to gain assurance.
21:49: He didn't know how to believe. He didn't know if God had accepted him. He didn't know if he understood things enough, and he doubted and he struggled.
21:59: Well, two months before he's on his way to Yale, God savingly meets with David Brainerd, and his heart suddenly has great joy and a sense of the forgiveness of his sins and assurance comes.
22:17: And with the freshness of that and the glowing joy of that, he rides 40 miles to New Haven, to Yale College to start his first year of college.
22:31: We would call that the freshman year. Is that the Canadian term too? First year of college, freshman year of college for Americans.
22:43: So, he enters Yale as a freshman, but he begins to excel. And by the time he's a junior, that was our third year of college, he is a class president of the largest class that Yale had had up to this point.
23:01: And he's a leader, but he also had heard George Whitefield preach. And he hadn't met
23:08: Jonathan Edwards yet, but revival was occurring in those colonies in different places.
23:16: Whitefield had come over, the first great awakening, 1735 is pretty much the year it begins.
23:24: And God is moving across the colonies and among students at Harvard and Yale.
23:31: And so, David Brainerd has embraced this great fervent faith of biblical
23:38: Christianity. And he comes with a fire in his heart to Yale.
23:46: And in his junior year, he experiences something that changed his life and his future forever.
23:58: And because of that, it changed the future of a lot of other things. It was a midweek day and the students would have to come to a chapel service.
24:13: And one of the undergraduate lecturers, they called them tutors in the 18th century, was leading in a prayer.
24:22: And so, David Brainerd goes back to his room with a friend and they're in the privacy of the room, the door standing open.
24:32: And David Brainerd says, you know, I don't think Mr. Hislop has any more grace than this chair
24:41: I'm sitting on. Well, that may have been true because there were a lot of liberals, there were a lot of unconverted people in ministry.
24:52: It was an admirable choice of profession in the 18th century.
25:00: To be a lawyer, to be a landowner, and to be a minister was a role of honor.
25:10: It was admirable. So there were many that were unregenerate. And this tutor, David Brainerd observes and makes this statement,
25:19: I don't think he has any more grace than this chair I'm sitting on. Someone's walking by the room and they hear two young men criticizing the tutor by name, and they go and report him.
25:35: Well, there were so many students that were for the revival that, and there were so many administration that were against the revival, that the administration had made a recent policy that if any students are heard criticizing any professors or tutors, that they would be disciplined.
26:00: So Brainerd gets reported, they find out who it is, they call him in, and he apologizes immediately.
26:06: He owns his failure. He apologizes to the tutor personally.
26:13: He apologizes to the group of administrators. And then they say, all right, well, you have to stand before the whole student body and all of the
26:25: Yale College family, and you have to make a public apology with public repentance for this.
26:35: Well, David Brainerd's conscience said, this doesn't seem right.
26:42: And so when he wouldn't do it, Jonathan Edwards didn't think he should do it. He was expelled suddenly, and he was not able to graduate.
26:55: So picture him riding on his horse, the 40 miles to go back to the farm, and he's the first Brainerd in several generations that had not been to Yale and graduated.
27:10: He's out. Now his chances of being a pastor in the colonies is gone, because in those days, you could only be a pastor or a minister of a church if you were a graduate of a
27:24: European university or Harvard or Yale. His hopes are dashed of being a minister.
27:30: He didn't want to be a farmer. He knew not what to do, and he was distraught.
27:39: And behind the scenes, God was working to redirect his life to the work that he was called by God to do, and that was, he was given an invitation to go to the
28:01: Indians in Long Island, New York.
28:08: Now the mission agency sending, they had an office in New York, but it was the
28:14: Scottish, it was the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
28:22: They were doing missions in the colonies, and so David Brainerd was recommended to them after his expulsion, this man could go.
28:37: And so David Brainerd goes. He leaves, and as a 24 -year -old in the fall of 1742,
28:50: David Brainerd finds himself riding his horse alone. He's going alone, a long ride from Connecticut to Long Island in those days, to begin what might become the shortest but the most famous missionary career in all of Christian history, because it became famous because of what happened.
29:18: And if Jonathan Edwards had not taken the diary and journal of David Brainerd and published it, no one today would have ever heard of David Brainerd were it not for Jonathan Edwards.
29:31: So David, at the age of 24, begins three years only of Christian ministry.
29:42: He was among the Indians only for three years from 1743 to 1746, and then a year later at age 28, he died in the home of Jonathan Edwards.
29:57: So what did David Brainerd do? Well, as a young white man in a culture where the
30:04: Indian tribes didn't trust white men because the white traders had cheated them and the white politicians had cheated them, this young white man of 24 was going to ride into an
30:19: Indian tribe at the end of Long Island uninvited, unknown, a stranger. And these
30:26: Indians would have had no clue why he was there and establish his first Indian mission on Long Island.
30:35: He was there 1743 to 1744. It was brief.
30:41: The second one in 1744 through 45 was in Pennsylvania.
30:51: I'm not sure how far it was from Philadelphia, but it was in the wilderness. It was all a wilderness in that time.
30:58: And he was there a year from 1744 to 1745. The third mission, he had heard about a group of Indians at Cross Weekson, New Jersey, which is halfway between Princeton and Philadelphia.
31:13: And he said, I'm going to go there because he was under he was under authority and he had been commissioned to find
31:20: Indian tribes where the gospel can be planted.
31:26: And he was a pioneer, an apostolic pioneer evangelist as a missionary.
31:33: But it was only at the third mission at Cross Weekson, New Jersey, where David saw really any blessing in his work.
31:42: But there in that third Indian mission, there was significant blessing because from the very beginning of his preaching, uh, these are
31:56: Indians that worship their ancestors and worship demons, have never heard of the white man's
32:04: God, have never seen a Bible. They know nothing, absolutely nothing. And Brainerd begins to preach.
32:11: And the first from the first week, they're open and they're listening and they're being struck.
32:19: He has a obviously a translator who knows enough English to translate.
32:25: And I think David kept that translator with him for the three years from location to location.
32:32: But as he's speaking just the gospel, but it was a true, pure, solid biblical gospel.
32:40: It was a doctrinal gospel. David Brainerd and his brother John, they could read their
32:48: Old Testament in Hebrew and their New Testament in Greek. They knew theology.
32:54: They knew Puritan theology. But they were missionaries and they were evangelists and they were given utterance by God and being able to make the gospel clear at the most elementary level through a translator to these what was truly in that day, savage
33:16: Indian tribes. So that first week, the
33:23: Spirit of God begins apart from any other thing of preaching, they didn't sing.
33:34: As he began to speak, Indians all over the area on the ground began to weep.
33:43: And they began to cry out. They were under deep conviction.
33:49: It was as if a rainstorm had come and settled and it started raining. That's why the
33:56: Bible calls this an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. My spirit will be poured out on all flesh.
34:04: And so God began to save people, old hardened men, young girls, and all ages in between.
34:15: There was no human explanation of who was under conviction. The whole tribe was coming under conviction.
34:23: And this went for a week to two weeks, a month, two months, three months. And the movement continued in mighty, amazing power.
34:34: And the entire tribe virtually was converted in those months and became a biblical church with membership, with discipline, with true biblical worship, and with accountability to one another and with real love for one another.
34:56: It was an astounding work. And you can read about it in Brainerd's journal, which
35:02: I really would encourage you to do that. Well, listen to what he says, because this was a time that David was not full of faith or encouraged or feeling good.
35:14: It was at a time he was the most discouraged and weary that he had been in all three years.
35:22: And he wrote this in his journal, I do not know that my hope for the conversion of the
35:29: Indians was at ever such a low point as then when
35:36: I came here among these Indians and saw God began to work. His hope was at the lowest point ever that he would even see
35:44: Indians saved. He was sick. He was already dying of the tuberculosis that would take his life 12 months later.
35:54: He was lonely. He was tired. He was depressed. He was often in deep depression.
36:03: It was a chronic, hereditary thing for David Brainerd. And that's when
36:12: God came. When the human situation and circumstances were at their lowest,
36:22: God came and did an amazing historic revival in our nation.
36:29: One of the greatest pure works of the Holy Spirit that the early colonies ever saw.
36:36: Well, he didn't realize that he only had about a year left to live. But in fact, let me read you an excerpt of what he was feeling at the moment.
36:57: Well, this is a quote about the movement. The Spirit of God began to open and change the hearts of both adults and children instantly, giving them clear understanding of the gospel and creating genuine receptivity to the truth.
37:13: A deep spirit of repentance and love for the Messiah and his future return swept through the whole tribe.
37:23: The idolatrous Indians of New Jersey had no previous knowledge whatsoever of Christianity other than the general revelation that witnessed to their conscience about the reality of a creator.
37:39: Some historians have inferred that the movement of the Holy Spirit there in the
37:45: Brainerd Indians was the greatest display, one of the greatest displays of divine power in all of church history since the day of Pentecost.
37:59: As one recorded it in simple terms, when David Brainerd first explained to the
38:04: Indians what sin was and how Jesus Christ came into the world and died to save them from everlasting punishment, it affected them so much to hear that Christ suffered to save such wicked
38:17: Indians as they were, that they threw themselves on the ground and sobbed aloud.
38:24: That is what what happened. So a church is birthed and his younger brother
38:33: John had graduated from Yale and he was coming out to visit periodically.
38:39: He wasn't going, he wanted to pastor a church, but he came to visit
38:44: David at some of David's lowest times and David realizes at a certain point he's dying.
38:57: He knew it and he knew he had to leave.
39:03: So David leaves and John Brainerd comes to replace
39:09: David. John is the forgotten Brainerd. He was a graduate of Yale College, but David recommended
39:20: John to the mission agency to replace him, not just because he was a brother, but because he was qualified.
39:29: He had the same maturity and godliness as David, but he was more level in his life.
39:37: David was up and down with his depression. David was was flourished often times with zeal and passion and praying for hours in the snow, but John was more on an even keel.
39:54: While David was an evangelist, John had pastoral skills, so God had purpose in David leaving, who had been the one who reaped the harvest.
40:07: He's bringing in John to pastor this Indian church and to take the work over.
40:14: So John comes two years younger and he stays 10 times longer among the
40:22: Indians than David did. David had been three years among them in various locations.
40:28: John stays 35 years until the end of his life at 61 years old.
40:36: He dies in 1781, but John labors for over three decades as a missionary to the
40:44: Indians, as a church planter, and as a pastor and an educator. John Brainerd was instrumental in establishing the first Indian school in all of the colonies, and that school was moved and it became later
41:04: Dartmouth University. So he had a great influence in various ways on the future development of the nation.
41:15: He became a trustee for 25 years at the newfound college,
41:21: Princeton College. How did Princeton start? Well, when David Brainerd was expelled,
41:27: Jonathan Edwards and other Yale graduates were so offended at what the administration did toward David unjustly, that they came together and they said, we need a new college, and they started one, and it became
41:44: Princeton. So Princeton is a direct result of David Brainerd's new direction.
41:53: God was at work in various ways, but John rides to the
42:01: Indians while David is dying at Jonathan Edwards' home, and no one had more reasons to shrink away from going alone to replace his legendary brother.
42:13: John could have easily declined, and he could have compared himself to David, which he did once in a while.
42:26: He could have thought, I don't have the endurance that my brother has. I can't do this.
42:35: Fears, carnal counsel to not go, he would have heard, but he chose to go.
42:47: And so he, like David, rides his horse to the final location with the
42:55: Indian church in Bethel, Maryland.
43:02: And in going to among them, he didn't know any language.
43:08: They knew John and respected him, but so there was not as much ice to break or ground to break as David had, but there were many, many problems.
43:23: A plague the first six months swept through the Indian tribe, and 160 of the
43:29: Indians died day after day, and it was on John to bury them, to comfort their families.
43:38: It was a very, very difficult time. John's ministry officially begins in April of 1747, six months before David will die.
43:52: And what did John do? He pastored
43:58: Indian congregations. He established schools. He planted churches wherever could.
44:06: Now David, if you read the journal of David Brainerd, David would take a ride for two or three weeks or longer on his horse into wilderness areas, looking for villages, looking for settlers, and he would go take the gospel.
44:22: Many times to Indians, many times to white settlers. John continued the same thing.
44:29: He took long trips, sleeping by streams at night on a bearskin when wolves would be howling all around and far away from any towns whatsoever.
44:43: They're riding on the paths that have been charted in the primitive maps they had to get to places known and places perhaps unknown.
44:53: John continued this pioneer work of evangelism, but he planted churches.
44:59: He planted a number of churches wherever he could find converts.
45:08: Now, evangelism to the Indians was a very difficult thing. You're dealing with people who know nothing, who don't understand, don't even believe in the white man's
45:20: God, aren't open to the white man's religious book because the white settlers had tried to poison them from it.
45:28: It was a very difficult thing, and it took a lot of patience just to begin to catechize them one -on -one, families in their teepees with smoke there.
45:41: It affected David Brainerd immensely, but he endured it. He had to put up with it.
45:49: Another excerpt about the evangelism among the
45:57: Indians, one author summarized it this way of the difficulties, quote, one of the obstacles in reaching the
46:08: Indians with the gospel was their negative feeling toward white men who call themselves
46:14: Christians. One Indian leader complained to David Brainerd that it was the
46:19: Christians who taught the Indians to drink and provide them with alcohol. Well, not real
46:25: Christians, but they professed to be Christians, white settlers. It was the
46:30: Christians who enslaved the Indians and forced them to fight the white man's battles against the
46:36: French and Spanish. And it was the Christians who pretended to be their friends and then would steal their lands, close quote.
46:47: So just the favor they needed from God to cause the
46:58: Indians to be open to them, to trust them at all, was a huge thing. And everywhere
47:03: David and John went, God gave supernatural favor. Because the
47:11: Indians saw something different. They saw men who didn't seem to be a threat, who were honest, who were humble, who seemed to have character.
47:19: And the more the Indian tribes knew David and John's life, the more they trusted them.
47:28: Well, one time there was a group of Indians had asked
47:35: David if they could answer, ask a lot of questions.
47:41: So this may have been the first Q &A in American Christianity. I don't know. But this is quite striking.
47:48: Listen to what listen to what the honest and good questions the Indians had. And think of how you would answer these questions.
47:58: First question, why didn't God kill the devil that made all men bad? If he has all power?
48:07: Well, you answer that one for a five year old and see how far you get. What an amazing question.
48:14: Next question, they asked Brainerd, why did God not give all men good hearts?
48:23: How can I bring my heart to love prayer? How long was
48:29: Adam good before he sinned? Does the devil dwell in us just as we dwell in a wigwam?
48:40: When a soul goes to heaven or hell, what does it say when it gets there? Say this childlike questions of a of a new heart that knows nothing.
48:51: It's a blank slate. You see, why does God punish men in hell forever?
48:59: Why was why must we love our enemies? And how can we do it? Will a good man keep sinning sometimes?
49:10: The Indians responded eagerly asking questions for hours.
49:17: The first question for some was this, how might we come to know Jesus Christ?
49:23: An Indian once asked former missionary John Elliott in the colonies, why has no white man ever told us this before?
49:34: Why did you wait to tell us? Elliott could only answer,
49:40: I'm sorry. So John is engaged in this catechizing work on the foundation that David Brainerd has laid.
49:53: But the main thing I want to just emphasize is
50:00: I began to move toward closing these thoughts.
50:06: The suffering the Brainerds went through is remarkable, but part of it was because of the 18th century.
50:16: Life was so much harder. People died so much earlier. But what the
50:24: Brainerds did and how they suffered from the time
50:30: David arrived among the Indians in that first year, every week or every month, sometimes days strung together back to back.
50:42: It was very hard and very, very difficult. Deep discouragements.
50:49: David sometime would land with a fever two days in his private place where he would sleep and he was too sick.
51:04: Tuberculosis was working deeply and he was vomiting up blood. He was in bad fevers.
51:11: He sometimes would believe that he was dying. And so extreme difficulties in every way.
51:22: And, excuse me, another excerpt or two, quote, when the
51:38: Brainerd mission began, suffering was a great reality for both David and John.
51:45: During his many travels, John suffered at the hands of horse thieves and he'd have to walk days to get home.
51:57: He suffered and endured through exposure to the elements and had many disappointments and trials in the pastoral.
52:07: He, like David, also battled through some spiritual depression and John, the death of his first wife and two children before he remarried.
52:17: David never married. John married twice. Yet they persevered through it all and they loved the
52:25: Indians and they remained faithful, both David and John.
52:32: By this time, David, at the end of his life, was a legend and he had offers to come back to the comforts of Connecticut and Boston and he declined them.
52:50: John had the same thing. They would not be deterred from their
52:56: God -called mission to do the ministry God had put before them no matter how hard it got.
53:07: So secular historians have said and the governors of the colonies within 100 years of the
53:17: Brainerd's Indian mission work, secular historians and colonial governors said the
53:25: Brainerd brothers, David and John, and the Brainerd Indian mission did more for Native Americans than anyone ever did in all of early
53:37: American history. So that's a very, very brief sketch.
53:44: I commend you reading. If you've never read David's journal, get it and read it.
53:51: It's hard reading at points, but it's amazing. And then this is the only book that exists that tells the story together,
53:59: David and John's work together and how John's life was used of God in the same way.
54:06: So, well, let's apply this for just a few minutes here. Fast forward 280 years.
54:20: How do we endure hardship in living the Christian life and in Christian ministry?
54:28: How do we persevere? If you're a young person and you're a new Christian starting out or you're a young man or a young couple and you feel the excitement of feeling like God is calling you to future ministry and you want to serve
54:45: Christ, how do we endure for the first year and five years and 10 and 20 and 40 and 50?
54:56: How do we keep going through a very dark world?
55:03: How do we run well to the end and not give up? How do we, can we figure it out?
55:09: Can we mount up the resources where we got it all? Um, we, we, we know what we need to know and we've got it figured out.
55:19: We've got a plan in place where we won't mess up. Can we pull this off? The answer is no.
55:28: How do we persevere to the end so that our journey ends well and on our deathbed we can say,
55:37: Father, as imperfect as I was, you know, my heart was serving you right to the end and I stayed committed to the cause and to the
55:52: King and you can die with joy. How do you get there? Well, Paul tells us in some very specific, simple ways.
56:10: He warns about one thing over and over again with the word which
56:17: Jesus used to beware, beware.
56:24: If the Christian walks in watchfulness and walks in daily obedience to the commands of Christ and the daily obedience to the, to the exhortations in the
56:37: New Testament, if we give real heed to those seriously, we will finish well.
56:46: It's when men and women stop doing that, that their heart begins to stray because their heart is growing cold and they ultimately end up in the ditch of divorce or adultery or liberalism when they seem to be so solid before many go that path.
57:09: Brethren, beware, Paul said over and over again. It means when he says beware, it means he's saying do not get sidetracked.
57:21: There are many things that want to get a sidetracked, aren't there? The, the, the confusion and the division in the professing evangelical world and various movements and trends and fads and, and new ideas always coming down the pike and it makes our heads spin.
57:48: We can get discouraged just by the professing church world. Beware, brethren, don't let that happen.
57:56: It doesn't matter what's happening in the professing church world. What you and I are called to is to stay faithful and don't be distracted.
58:07: You know, I've had close friends over the years who seem to start so well.
58:20: I think of one, one fella. He was a dispensational fundamentalist
58:26: Baptist who became a reformed Baptist and then he got smarter and smarter and he became a
58:37: Presbyterian. That's not a put down on Presbyterians. I'm just saying he was on a trajectory where he was reading everything high theology and he moves from being a fundamental
58:47: Baptist to a reformed Baptist to a Presbyterian and then he starts reading the wrong guys and he becomes a liberal
58:58: Anglican and then that's not satisfactory enough and then the last
59:03: I had heard from him, he had joined the Orthodox church. And so do not think that because you love biblical worship now and that you believe a certain confession of faith or that you, you feel like you're on solid ground.
59:24: Don't presume that you couldn't change for the worse.
59:32: You could. Paul says, let no one deceive you.
59:43: Do not be moved away from the hope of the gospel. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy or empty deception according to the traditions of men and not according to Christ.
59:58: And Paul speaks with white hot passion to the Galatians about their choice of turning away from him.
01:00:08: It says, I'm amazed that you could so soon turn away from him to another gospel, which is not a gospel.
01:00:21: Beware brethren. Paul says in the last chapter of the last epistle he ever wrote, when he knows his earthly end is near, he says,
01:00:35: I charge you. Preach the word. Brethren, those of you who are pastors or bible teachers in your churches, just stay with the scriptures.
01:00:49: Don't preach from the books of men, though they're useful.
01:00:55: Don't chase fads. Preach the word. It's not, it's not our opinions that the sheep need.
01:01:04: It's God's voice in the Bible. Preach the word. Stay at it. Stay at it with freshness and dependence on the
01:01:13: Holy Spirit. Paul says, I charge you, preach the word. Many young men that I've seen,
01:01:20: I know some of them who should have jumped into church life to be a servant of the church and to get under elders.
01:01:32: Instead, some of them become great arguers and polemics and start podcasts.
01:01:42: And they just want to argue with the intellectuals that are out there doing the same thing. Brethren, don't get sidetracked.
01:01:51: Just preach the word. There are so many things that will pull us to defend the faith or do apologetics or this or that and the other.
01:02:02: And I'm not saying there's not a place for that if it's really well done. But there are many doing it who shouldn't be doing it.
01:02:11: There are many that are distracting hungry
01:02:19: Christians when when the task before us is just to stay with the
01:02:29: Bible. He says, be ready in season and out of season.
01:02:36: Why? Because he says the time will come when men will not endure sound doctrine, but they will follow their own desires because they have itching ears and they turn their ears away from the truth and they're turned aside to fables.
01:03:00: That is myths, man -made fiction. The ESV says they will wander off into myths.
01:03:08: So it's not a quick media step. One day you love John MacArthur and the next day you love, you know, the the flaming liberal.
01:03:18: No, they wander off into myths. Men don't go from preaching the truth in March to preaching heresy in April.
01:03:27: They wander off into it. They drift and get off track.
01:03:35: You and I, whether you've been a Christian five years or 50, or you've been in ministry one year or for decades, you and I could be turned aside if we're not watchful.
01:03:51: You could be misled. I do a lot of ministry in the state of Missouri and every year and whenever I'm in St.
01:04:00: Louis, I'll look for a radio station in the car that has hymns playing.
01:04:11: And so suddenly this one will land on one of them. And these men, very smart, joyful, and they're talking about Christ and the gospel.
01:04:24: And I said, well, this sounds good. Until I hear one of them say, and you know, the
01:04:30: Blessed Mary. And I go, oh, okay, I know what this is.
01:04:37: Catholic theological apologetics radio program that airs every day all over that part of Missouri.
01:04:48: And I would listen some when I realized what it was. And I was amazed at how persuasive and how well -spoken they are with lies and heresy.
01:05:06: So convincing. And so you can begin to listen.
01:05:13: Michael Durham and I know some men, some younger men down in the States who were so solid, seemingly for years, they began to listen to the wrong people.
01:05:29: They began to read the wrong authors after COVID started and after the woke movement heated up in the
01:05:38: United States. And these young guys now are just, they're gone out of even solid
01:05:45: Christianity whatsoever. Brethren, how do we make sure we don't get cast aside?
01:05:54: How do you know you'll make it to the end? What do you do if your heart fears that you're confused and you don't know if you'll keep on following the cross?
01:06:05: How do we endure and finish well? Simple admonitions of the Bible. You keep your hand to the plow.
01:06:12: That's the picture Jesus gave. No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back.
01:06:21: You don't look back. You keep your hand to the plow because you're marching right on with Christ in His Word, with His people in worship, in building up your faith with nourishing words of truth.
01:06:36: You keep your hand to the plow. Whenever you read that short phrase, three -worded phrase in the
01:06:46: New Testament, does it affect you ever? You know what it is? Remember Lot's wife.
01:06:55: That ever affect you? Or it ought to affect us because you spiritually could do what she did physically.
01:07:06: That's why Jesus said the words. The Bible tells us, then shall we know if we press on to know the
01:07:18: Lord. Now that's got to be in any Christian leader's heart first before they do any ministry.
01:07:27: And it's the heart cry of every true Christian. I want to press on to know
01:07:32: Christ. I want to love Him. I want to walk with Him. I want to please Him.
01:07:38: I want to know Him. I want to experience Him. Lord, help me to press on to know the
01:07:45: Lord. And that's an Old Testament prophet that said that, right? That's not Pauline or from Peter.
01:07:53: Then shall we know if we press on to know the Lord. Is it in your heart every day to some degree,
01:08:01: Lord, I want to press on to know You, to truly know
01:08:06: You, to walk with God daily? Is that our goal when we wake up? To walk with God as Enoch did.
01:08:15: To trust in the Lord in our given sphere of where God has put us.
01:08:22: To trust in the Lord daily with what He's got us doing, whether it's mothering children or leading a company or doing ministry.
01:08:35: To daily, Lord, I'm trusting You today. To trust in the
01:08:41: Lord and to cultivate faithfulness, as the Bible says. And to delight ourselves in Him.
01:08:49: Does this verse ever stir you also? Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.
01:08:58: Why do we need to take heed to ourselves because our hearts can deceive us?
01:09:05: Because God hasn't intended for any believer to be an island, but to be in community connected to brethren who can help you stay healthy spiritually.
01:09:16: Take heed to yourselves and to the doctrine. One translation says, pay close attention to your life and your teaching.
01:09:28: We need to over and over again, if we would keep enduring well, present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God daily.
01:09:40: We need to keep reaching forward to the things which are ahead of us and to press toward the goal of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.
01:09:48: And Paul said to Timothy, he said, O Timothy, guard that which is entrusted to you.
01:09:54: Guard it. Guard it. Jealously guard it and count it precious.
01:10:01: The gospel, the church, being a Christian, being in the kingdom, the resources you have, the brethren you relate to.
01:10:15: Guard that which God has entrusted you with. I love
01:10:24: Peter's admonition, his long admonition in 2 Peter. You know, growing up,
01:10:31: I was very bad in math, really bad. You may think, well, how bad were you?
01:10:38: Well, my first year of college, I flunked algebra one and then take it over again.
01:10:43: That's really bad math. So, but here Peter does some simple math.
01:10:51: It's a simple addition. Okay. So in fact, I want you to let's see, turn with me to 2
01:11:00: Peter chapter one, verse five.
01:11:10: Here is Peter's spiritual mathematics of addition.
01:11:19: And if you and I, if we just do what this passage says, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, you will finish well.
01:11:33: If you do what Peter here says, you'll finish well. You're assured of it. Follow it with me closely here in verse beginning in verse five.
01:11:46: He says, besides this giving all diligence. So brethren, we do have to be diligent.
01:11:53: The lazy, the lazy person won't get anywhere spiritually. We have to have all diligence in living the
01:12:01: Christian life, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, which is moral excellence.
01:12:10: So you're adding these things to your life. These are the building blocks of your character that the
01:12:17: Holy Spirit will produce. Add to your faith virtue or moral excellence and add to virtue knowledge, true knowledge, the true knowledge of God and knowledge of the
01:12:32: Bible. You add to your virtue knowledge and to knowledge you add self -control.
01:12:40: Why is self -control important? It's important in every area of life, isn't it?
01:12:48: We have to make choices to control ourselves, to discipline ourselves for the purpose of life and godliness.
01:12:56: So add to knowledge self -control and to self -control endurance and to endurance godliness and to godliness, brotherly affection and to brotherly affection, love.
01:13:14: Now just stop for a minute and think about this. What if all those things described there are growing in your life?
01:13:23: Not perfectly, but purposely, steadily, progressively growing.
01:13:32: Moral excellence is growing and knowledge is growing and self -control is growing and endurance and godliness and brotherly affection and love.
01:13:43: These things grow in your life. Galatians 5, it reminds me of the ninefold fruit of the
01:13:49: Spirit. Have you ever seen a tree that will grow two kinds of fruit, different fruit?
01:13:57: Have you ever seen a peach tree growing bananas too? No, but the Christian grows ninefold fruit all the time as a believer.
01:14:07: Fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, faith, self -control.
01:14:15: So this is how we endure, brethren. You make all diligence about your salvation and your pursuit of God and holiness and devouring the
01:14:31: Bible and learning to pray and being a great churchman where you're there for the meetings and you're serving, you're all in.
01:14:40: And in that environment, you're going to be healthy and growing. And Peter says, look at it.
01:14:47: Verse 8, for if these things be in you and abound, they will make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our
01:15:00: Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, these things ensure you're making it.
01:15:09: Someone walking in these realities, they're not going to fall away. Their eyes of their hearts are going to be set on Christ and the love of their hearts is going to be upon Christ Himself.
01:15:20: And they are going to be always looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of their faith. And they're going to endure as seeing the one who's invisible.
01:15:31: We look to him as our example. Brethren, every one of you, if you're a true child of God, you're going to make it.
01:15:40: You're going to make it all the way. I don't care what the culture is in Canada or America. It doesn't matter.
01:15:47: Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world. He's building His kingdom and it's above culture and it's above politics and it's above the earthly realm.
01:16:00: He is building a kingdom of which we're a part and which will endure forever, forever.
01:16:10: Your task is the straight and narrow way, following closely through whatever may come.
01:16:21: I'm going to close with this. A year ago, May, last May, it was not a year ago,
01:16:27: May. Last May, I was scheduled to leave in the summer for an overseas trip for a number of weeks.
01:16:36: And in the middle of the night, in the middle of May, I woke up and my back was out.
01:16:45: It turned out I had herniated two discs. They were bad, but they finally herniated.
01:16:53: And the pain wasn't bad, but I couldn't sit in a chair for more than two minutes.
01:16:59: So five months, I was pretty much in bed. I could get up and down, but five months.
01:17:05: So my, all my calendar was canceled. And in August, I had back surgery and which was successful.
01:17:14: But from mid May to October, I was flat on my back. This was not on my radar screen, nor did
01:17:26: I desire for it to be. But God will interrupt our lives with hard things, with unwelcome things, because He has purposes to cause us to learn to endure hard things, hardship.
01:17:48: As a good soldier of Jesus Christ, every trial He brings to your life is meant for your sanctification.
01:17:58: He's not against you, He's for you. And He's equipping you with those hardest things to run well to the end, to never fall away, to give all diligence.
01:18:12: He can stand before Christ with joy in your hearts. John Wesley, his dying words to friends around his bed, he said, best of all,
01:18:24: God is with us. Brethren, it's true. Whatever you're going through, whatever you've been through, whatever you will go through in the future,
01:18:33: God is with you. Best of all, He's with you. And nothing will be able to separate us from the love of Christ.
01:18:44: Therefore, endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Let's pray.
01:18:52: Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church. If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our
01:19:02: Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.